gurley, zeke clearly were
the most overrated is the mid to late round QB’s. They’ve actually had a decent recent string of success but they traditionally almost never pan out to anything worthwhile.
WILson, Dak, Brady. Packers had good success grabbing late round QBs in the 90s with Hasselbeck and Brunell.
That’s five in 25 years. Not exactly a rousing run of excellence.
And for every one that hits there’s a couple dozen that don’t amount to anything. Or worse, amount to Nathan Peterman.
Im sure there are more, that was just off the top of my head without looking anything up.
It just seems pretty coincidental that any time a big name RB goes down, his backup tends to put up basically the same production. I’m not at all convinced that a random 6th round RB would be appreciably worse than Zeke in Dallas’s offense.
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Well, there’s not a rousing run of excellence pretty much ANYWHERE in the QB draft, barring the once every 5 years or so apparent sure thing. I’m still amazed that in a country of 150 million or so US men, there are probably 10 or so teams who are in great shape, another 20 or so thinking “meh, could be worse” and that’s about it. So I dunno if we’re just REALLY bad at picking out who’s going to be any good, or maybe the right idea is to just tossing plausible candidates against the wall over and over until accidentally one sticks. And even the guys who look like sure things flame out from time to time.
MM MD
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Kurt Cousins, BDN, Tony Romo. With Romo, Brady, and WILson you have three of the elite QBs of the 2010s being drafted outside the first two rounds.
The point is that an elite RB doesn’t account for more wins for you team vs replacement level. Whether the pick is a good player is irrelevant.
Edit: an elite RB will help a team get more wins but not vs other positions you can pick in the 1st round.
Sure but if you have graded the RB a lot better than everyone else around at your pick, I think you should take the damn RB. I guess this is the point I’m making.
McCaffrey was thought to be a LOL pick but he ended up way, way better than everyone else picked around him.
It’s not only that. It’s that you have to pay whoever you draft at that spot the same amount of money. When Saquon got picked 2nd overall, he was immediately one of the 5 highest paid RBs in the league and he hadn’t played a snap.
If you pick a QB there, he’s getting paid less than some backups in the league to start and might end up being a franchise changing player. Then you spend the extra cash you save on getting a proven running back or just drafting one late. It’s why you have teams often reaching for QBs even if their talent doesn’t warrant anything more than a day 2 pick. The opportunity to get a franchise QB at such a cheap price is precious.
Even if the RB is the highest graded player in the history of the game you don’t take them in the first round.
Theoretically 25-30 range wouldn’t be horrible in that situation.
It would still be pretty bad.
People picked immediately after him include Patrick Mahomes and Deshaun Watson. I’d rather have those guys.
Even if you’re just talking about RBs: Dalvin Cook, Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, Tarik Cohen and James Conner were all taken in Rounds 2 to 4.
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To me there are really only 4 positions you should break the bank for: QB, WR, Edge and CB.
I almost feel like at the other positions it’s a long-term detriment to have an all-world player vs. a very good player.
A star RB wants the ball a lot and of course wants to get paid. A very good RB is usually happy with whatever role they have and can be kept around for relatively cheap.
Even at a “premium position” like LT - if Eric Fisher was all pro every year like his 1-1 draft status would suggest - I don’t know if the Chiefs could have kept him. And then you lose all that continuity. There is nothing worse than wandering in the wilderness with crappy LTs until you find a decent one. I think the Chiefs got lucky that he was just below the level which would command a huge LT contract.
However I don’t think you can fill in with a bunch of ok WRs like you can with RBs. You need players who can consistently win one on one. Same for CB and Edge.
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NE has been doing that for some time and been fine. This year they just decided to go with worse than OK.
Seattle went to back to back owls with WR1 Doug Baldwin. Dude was average and made to look a lot better by WIMson.
I drop WR from this list and add LT, and then also maybe center - if you’re running a fairly sophisticated offense where the center calls out adjustments.
The Kelce piece irritates me. He failed a drug test, sat out a year, and from what I can tell hasn’t had any issues beyond the drug test. Probably knocked him down to the third round of the draft and cost him a pile of $$ too - and haven’t heard much in terms of anything since then. One (or two, or three) of these are not like the other ones, AFAIK. But I’m not hard-core chiefs fan, so maybe he punches 3 legged kittens, or something.
MM MD
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Yeah WR is borderline.
Trading up for Julio Jones is an interesting case study.
Never won a super bowl.
If it wasn’t for horrible coaching he wins a super bowl with some game changing plays.
Narratives in sports are typically stupid and based on small sample sizes.
Does the article even mention Suggs pouring bleach on his wife? Or whatever it is that Clark did? The Chiefs are a perfect team for that city, as evidenced by Chiefs Planet.
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I read a piece on Andy Reid a few weeks ago that talked about after his son died he kind of saw the world differently and is more open about giving people second chances.
Also his sons were the ones that really convinced him to give Vick another chance.
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So only Bosa is on the team?